The crowd saw it and howled, and the bookmakers screamed at the offending jockey as he rode off the course into the Paddock.

“Plucky little effort!” shouted Old Mat in Silver’s ear.  “He deserved to pull it off.”

No harm, in fact, had been done.

Four-Pound-the-Second had missed Jackaroo’s quarters by half a length; but the big horse never faltered in his stride, charging on like a bull-buffalo, and rising at the water as the mare landed over it.

The old man dropped his glasses, and settled back on his heels.

“What next?” he said.

“Can’t do much now, I guess,” answered Silver comfortably.

Old Mat turned in his lips.

“Watch it, sir,” he said.  “There’s millions in it.”

As the favourite and the outsider swept away for the second round in a pursuing roar, the width of the course lay between them.  The mare hugged the rails; the brown horse swung wide on the right.

“You’re giving her plenty of room, Mr. Woodburn,” said the White Hat in front.

“Yes, my lord,” Mat answered. “‘Don’t crowd her,’ I says.  ’She likes a lot o’ room.  So do Chukkers.’”

Just clear of the course outside the rails, under the Embankment, a little group of police made a dark blue knot about the stretcher on which Boy Braithwaite had been taken from the course.  As the brown horse swept hard by the group a blob of yellow thrust up suddenly above the rails amid the blue.  It was too much even for Four-Pound.  He shied away and crashed into his fence.  Only his weight and the speed at which he was travelling carried him through.  A soughing groan went up from the Grand Stand, changing to a roar, as the great horse, quick as a goat, recovered himself and settled unconcernedly to his stride again.

“Riz from the dead to do us in,” muttered Old Mat.  “Now he’s goin’ ’ome again,” as the blob of yellow collapsed once more.  “P’raps he’ll stop this time.”

“I think it was an accident,” said Silver.

“I know them accidents,” answered Old Mat.  “There’s more to come.”

For the moment it seemed to the watchers as if the mare was forging ahead; and the Americans took heart once again.  But the green jacket and the star-spangled rose at Beecher’s Brook together; and the young horse, as though chastened by his escape, was fencing like a veteran.

As the horses turned to the left at the Corner, something white detached itself from the stragglers on the Embankment and shot down the slope at the galloping horses like a scurry of foam.

“Dog this time,” grunted Old Mat, watching through his glasses.  “Lurcher, big as a bull-calf.”

Whatever it was, it missed its mark and flashed across the course just clear of the heels of the Putnam horse.  He went striding along, magnificently unmoved.

Old Mat nodded grimly.

“You can’t upset my little Fo’-Pound—­bar only risin’s from the dead, which ain’t ‘ardly accordin’ not under National Hunt Rules anyway,” he said.  “If a tiger was to lep in his backside and chaw him a nice piece, it wouldn’t move him any.”